Lewis Black

Americans have a long list of political problems: the debt ceiling, the shutdown, immigration reform and party standoffs.

Comedian Lewis Black has one: There’s just too much to talk about.

“I had 20 minutes of material that didn’t make the last special,” bemoans Black, who performs his stand-up routine Saturday at Pala Casino. “I’ve been working on a bit about legalizing pot for more than a year, but there isn’t room for it.”

Earlier this year, Black debuted “Old Yeller: Live at Borgata,” the first comedy special to premiere simultaneously on cable and satellite platforms, courtesy of Image Entertainment.

“Old Yeller” bears no relation to the dog, Black explains. He’s just old and he yells a lot.

He pushed for a live special, he says, because his comedy is inspired by current events.

Known for finger-pointing and dropping F-bombs during his explosive routines, the obstreperous comic’s latest outrage is “the least functional Congress in my lifetime.”

“They have allowed a small vocal minority to grab the rudder of the ship, and I blame them all,” says Black, 65.

“(The shutdown) is entirely for their self-interest and for them to get re-elected again. That’s not the way it works. They should get out of the gym and go to a bar. When I was a kid, drunks ran the government better.”

Black also slams his own generation’s shortcomings, a generation that “took nothing from the way they were born and raised and want to go back to an idyllic situation that doesn’t exist without high taxes and government funding.”

“Sorry you won’t be getting Social Security when you get older,” he apologized when he appeared as a keynote speaker earlier this year to the graduates of UC San Diego’s Marshall College. “No one ever said we were supposed to pass it on to the next generation, so we spent it.”

And then there is his rant on what many refer to as Obamacare.

“Democrats call it Obamacare because the Democrats, in their own fashion, want to show us that they are as dumb as the Republicans are stupid,” says Black, a two-time Grammy Award winner, New York Times best-selling author and regular commentator on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.”

“Even Obama started calling it that, and that sent me off the rails. It’s the Affordable Health Care Act. Call it what it is. Richard Nixon, Ted Kennedy and Wilbur Mills essentially created the model. At least from everything I read.”

Though he’s referred to as the “angry comic,” Lewis has a warm and fuzzy side, especially when it comes to performing for the military in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I had an opportunity to go, and it was the most eye-opening experience that I’ve had since I took LSD,” says Black.

“They are out there in the middle of a desert and I’m just doing shows, and I’m, like, a wreck. Their level of sacrifice overwhelmed me. If the American people had 10 percent of that, we wouldn’t be having the problems we have.”

Black takes issue with both political parties; it makes you wonder which side he supports.

“I’m a socialist,” says Black, a Jewish comedian who was born in Washington, D.C. “You have nothing to fear from me because my party doesn’t exist. What appeals to me about socialism? It’s kind of an enforced Christianity.”